We always had a feeling that Daylight Saving Time (DST) was logically flawed, not really saving energy. Just like that old adage that you're supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day, the notion of DST saving anything is an old wive's tale. There's little evidence that DST saves any energy at all.

Now there's a study conducted by Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Indiana, a state in which most of its residents avoided the old "spring up, fall back" time change altogether until 2005. The Indiana study showed that DST actually wastes 1% of the energy used.

In the old days, lighting was the main use for electricity, and maybe DST made sense then, but now heating and cooling suck up the most power, so DST is just downright wasteful. Let's just abandon this dumb idea altogether, and save some energy!

Kotchen and Grant study (pdf), via The New York Times